Aquaculture is the controlled farming of sea creatures, such as fish or crustaceans. Aquaculture is contrasted with harvesting wild sea creatures (e.g., commercial fishing or crabbing) because aquaculture involves cultivating the sea creatures in a controlled environment under controlled conditions. Aquaculture operations to grow and harvest sea creatures require significant efforts to maintain a seawater environment with appropriate water quality control, however, because of the changed ecosystem in the artificially created environment. For example, a large amount of sea creatures in a concentrated aquaculture environment can result in an increase of waste and other sea creature byproducts that cause water quality to deteriorate. Water quality control extremely important to ensuring the sea creatures, particularly in the early development stages, are able to survive and grow within the aquaculture environment.
Recirculating aquaculture systems address this water control quality issue by removing the water in the aquaculture environment, filtering the water, and recirculating the water into the aquaculture environment. However, the recirculating aquaculture systems require machinery (e.g., pumps and filters) to extract, filter, and then recirculate the water into the aquaculture environment. The recirculating system thus increases the cost and complexity of the aquaculture system operation. Furthermore, when the aquaculture environment is very large, such as large pools or irrigation ditches (e.g., several hundred feet around) for crustacean harvesting, the cost to circulate or recirculate the seawater becomes excessively high. Thus, a problem is presented in maintain the seawater environment within acceptable water quality control parameters without the excessive cost and complexity of recirculating aquaculture systems.
When an extended trench is used for cultivating crustaceans (e.g., Florida stone crab, Menippe mercenaria), another problem arises in extracting the crustaceans from the aquaculture system. There is not a known method or apparatus for efficient, automated or semi-automated removal of crustaceans or other sea creatures from the extended trench. Accordingly, there is a need for a harvesting apparatus that can effectively and efficiently extract sea creatures from an aquaculture trench.